It’s difficult to miss the increasingly obvious martial atmosphere: recommendations for putting together a survival kit, Emmanuel Macron’s announcement on the new national service, speeches by the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces calling on citizens to “accept losing your children“… These increasingly intense and omnipresent speeches create a diffuse, almost palpable tension. How can we escape it? We asked the question to psychologist Amélie Boukhobza.
Why does alarmist speech affect us so much?
“The atmosphere is heavy, saturated. Many say they feel invaded, overwhelmed, as if a climate of permanent threat had crept into daily life” she confirms to us first of all.
And according to her, alarmist speech is never neutral. “It activates very old areas of our psychic functioning, those which react to danger, to the unexpected, to loss of control. By being exposed to catastrophic messages, the brain interprets these announcements as direct threats, even when they do not affect us immediately.” she analyzes.
And this particular climate depletes our emotional reserves.
“This tension creates a strange gap: we continue to work, go shopping, manage the children… but in the background, a persistent worry sets in. It is a form of dissonance, where ordinary life coexists with a collective imagination that becomes tense. And this contrast is exhausting, sometimes more than we realize.”
How to regain psychological control
Faced with this confusing feeling, how can we regain control? How can we unravel the real danger of political communication?
The first step is to recognize that fear can be used as leverage. “It mobilizes, influences, directs. Understanding this gives back a degree of control: we stop being subjected to the message, we observe its mechanism” explains the psychologist.
Then there’s the issue of overload. “No one is designed to absorb a constant stream of alerts, anxiety-inducing analyzes and dark scenarios. Reducing your exposure, by limiting notifications, avoiding channels that dramatize and protecting yourself from the most distressing content is not a denial. It’s mental hygiene.” she recommends.
Then come back to the concrete. “What we can actually hold in our hands: our work, our loved ones, our commitments, our routines. Reality calms the darkest projections. It readjusts the look, sometimes in just a few hours.”.
Refusing panic without ignoring the issues
You understand: fear is not a good guide. “It makes you act too quickly, think too little, anticipate too far. By imagining the worst, we end up feeding what worries us.”
adds Amélie Boukhobza.
Keeping a cool head does not mean minimizing international issues or cutting yourself off from the world. “It is rather a question of refusing to be led by panic, of restoring nuance in an environment saturated with strong emotions. The events remain complex, but today, everything is commented on continuously, sometimes to the point of excess. she concludes.
Regain support from reality, reduce exposure to anxiety-provoking messages and agree to restore nuance: simple gestures which allow you to find an interior space that is less saturated, less reactive, more lucid, and above all more livable.